You should get them together and publish them! Just think. It will be so exciting. And I want to read them. You can change everyone’s names if you want, but leave mine.

Umm… What??? Where has this come from? What are you talking about? You don’t even like reading!!

No. I was thinking. It will be so good. Brilliant. I want to read them. I want you to publish them. Just as they are. Don’t change anything at all.

….

Well… it’s an idea I suppose…. and it brings me to the quote at the top. I have always felt the need to burn those diaries one day – and there are various people who have been entrusted with this task over the years. I was contemplating entrusting this child… but it seems they may find their way to print! There is only one person I know who would burn them if I asked, without reading… and that is also the only person I wouldn’t mind reading them anyway…

But it’s an interesting thought. It’s where my head is going at the moment anyway. If people wanted me to write nice things about them, they really should have behaved better….

I saw my dad yesterday – he’s not looking too well. He’s losing weight. Can’t eat. Five years ago he had throat cancer. Emphysema. Chemo. Radiation. A year later, they found another mass. Surgery. Five years cancer free. This is the most common time to find another cancer in another place… The suspect this time is the bowel.

I look at my children’s father and consider the mistake I made there. He will have them tomorrow night – 9 weeks since he last saw them and had them for a night. But it’s Fathers’ Day next weekend so he’s already put in a request for a gift. This is the only reason he is here. He’ll be disappointed.

I look further back, to my own father. He was not a father at all. I rarely saw him. I didn’t see him at all for a couple of years in my teens. Or hear from him. When my mother told me they were divorcing, I was stunned… not at the divorce, but because I’d already told all my friends my parents were divorced. I rarely saw him even then. I was 8.

My earliest memory is of mum bandaging him after yet another motorcycle accident. I rarely remember him being around. I recall insisting on going fishing with him and my older brother – he resented having to take me and made no secret of it. Another time, I wanted eggs because he and my brother were having them one night – I hated eggs – dad was furious he now had to cook me eggs and I was spoiling the father son time.

So few memories…. and yet, all I heard growing up was that I was my father’s favourite…. Mum would frequently tell me to go and live with him and i would pack… and then all hell would break loose… but that is another story.

So I look back and suddenly understand the mistakes I made. What did I have to measure against? An absent father who made it clear how much he hated spending time with me…. but I was always told I was his favourite… and I believed it. That belief got me through some damned tough times as a child.

But there are other memories mixed in. Sitting watching the stars travel across the sky as we talked about all manner of things, long into the night. Laughter. The endless jokes. These memories are my favourite from my childhood. Mixed with the others which were some of the greatest betrayals.

Dad told me to expect so much from a guy. Raise my standards. A guy should treat a girl well – no swearing, no violence, just love… but he was sexist as well – a girl had to always put the effort in to look nice. When I left my husband for the first time, dad assumed he had cheated and told me it was my fault – I’d let myself go so it was natural he’d look elsewhere….

Yesterday, he was talking about how much he misses my ex husband. How he wishes they were still friends. He knows how much this hurts me, but he does it anyway – not to hurt me, but simply because his needs have always mattered more.

Years ago, when I fronted with a face half swollen , courtesy of my step-father, he told me – well, I wasn’t there, and you know how it is – sometimes a girl deserves a backhander…

When my marriage finally fell apart for the last time and I refused to change my mind, no matter how much everyone insisted… he stood there whilst my ex threw things at me, shoulder barged me several times making me fall, smashed walls, yelling, swearing… and dad was upset with me because he apparently felt uncomfortable… it wasn’t his place to intervene…

I have told him of the years of emotional and verbal abuse, the terror, doors kicked in to get to me, walls smashed beside my head, lying awake at night with the bedroom door locked, terrified he would smash it down and kill me this time… I have told him of the terror in the months after ending the marriage, unable to drive back home because I was convinced that this would be the time… Of finding the loaded rifle sitting in my bedroom wardrobe one morning… of the endless, endless threats to me and to any guy I spoke to…

I have told him all of this, but he wasn’t there…

And my ex has admitted there were times he would smash the wall rather than me because he knew if he hit me, he would never stop….

All of these memories… jumbled… rambling…

Deciphering why I love him still? Why I am the child who still goes to visit and makes sure he is okay? And yet I can’t forgive my mother her wrongs…. Maybe it’s simply because dad has always been a terrible father and has never pretended otherwise? My parents will never apologise. They will never admit their faults. The fault of losing my dad soon devastates me… although, to be honest, not as much as losing my friend this year did. But I’m wondering exactly what I will miss? The good bits I focus on I think…. but the more his illnesses take over, the more his memory fades, the more I see of those parts I have tried to forget….

There’s so few days when you don’t cross my mind… A memory… Laughter… Tears…

A part of me is still in denial.
Today’s memory is of that hospital room. One of us on each side of you, grasping your hand, waiting for the verdict. I can still feel the punch to the air when the doctor spoke. I can’t find the words to describe that. It was a punch. We each felt the hit low in our stomachs. You could hear the air forced from each of us.

I reach for the phone, to call and tell you my news, a funny story, to hear of your family, to ask your advice, that recipe I’ve forgotten… Scrolling… I remember… I still can’t delete your name…

I keep having the same argument with close friends. Why is society so hell bent on ‘blood is thicker than water’? We choose our friends. We are given our family.

I keep being told I will regret this in years to come… Perhaps… But for now, I have no regrets. I do not miss them. It’s been a year since I made this decision. I have not severed the ties completely. I answer the rare phone call. I respond to the odd message.

But I forget to check social media and see the passive aggressive texts aimed to hurt. I forget to be hurt when I am informed of them, or when they do show in my feed. I forget to check in and ensure they are still breathing. Still functioning. Still angry with the works and all the people who have wronged them. I forget….

Because I have lost too many people who matter. I have had my heart shattered too many times by those souls tangled with my own. I have come to realise that binding need the chipping away constantly, the pushing for a fight, the niggling at my self esteem, the lack of support.

Another friend just sent me a text thanking me for being an awesome second mum. I’ve been a second mum to countless people all my life. I’m not sure why I ever thought I’d never actually be a mother. Perhaps because I already had so many people to nurture.

What I’d like though, is a mother of my own. I’ve never had someone to tuck me in and give me warm soup when my throat is raw and my head is pounding and my chest is tight, as it is now. I’ve never had someone to guide me in the right direction and show me possible pathways when the light is dim. I’ve never had someone to hold me tight and tell me that I mean the world to them. I’ve never had someone to brush away my tears, hug away my fears and threaten to murder the world if it hurt me. So I’d like to, for once, have a mother of my own… Or just someone who cares enough to simply ask how *I* am going today…